I don’t think you need me to tell you that running a business is hard work. Like, really hard. It’s always hard, but I think it’s especially hard when you’re a solopreneur like me, because you have no one to fall back on, no one to swoop in when you can’t get to something, and no one to tell you you’re doing a good job. With all of that in mind, it’s important to make things easier when and where you can, which is why online business tools are so important.

Now, this is a story all about how…I started my Teachers Pay Teachers store. 😉 I began professionally teaching (as in, I had all of my degrees and a teaching license) during the 2012-2013 school year. I used TpT as a buyer during that school year, and it was, I think, at some point during 2013 that I switched from being a buyer to being a seller and started my store. I’m not sure exactly when I started my seller account, but I didn’t have any sales until the last quarter of 2013 – I know that from my data. And, as much as I wanted to make some extra income off of my store, I never really took it that seriously.

It’s a topic that most of us happily avoid discussing, but like them or not, they’re a reality. When you’re employed by a business, you know that you have taxes withheld from your paychecks. Depending on your state, federal, state, and/or city taxes are withheld. You file the W-2 form, and the accounting team with your employer takes care of those withholdings for you.

I’m going to jump right into the nitty gritty on this one, because it’s on my mind and because I had to deal with it recently while I was doing work for one of my clients. Let me give you a bit of backstory:

For some of my wonderful clients, I provide the service of searching for copyright violations of their Teachers Pay Teachers products and then sending cease-and-desist emails to the violators on their behalf. This is a process that sometimes gets a bit involved, and I’ve even had to work with one of my clients’ lawyers for violators who weren’t responding to (or even opening) my many emails. When I most recently logged into my client’s “legal” email account (A.K.A. I made a Gmail account called legal.myclientsbusinessname for this purpose), I saw the following response from someone I’d emailed about her school’s website having posted one of my client’s Teachers Pay Teachers products:

Hey hey, friend!

I'm Leslie, a former middle school teacher turned editor and Teacher-Author. I'm here to help female entrepreneurs improve their writing and to help teachers around the world save time on lesson planning. I'm glad you're here!

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About Leslie

I’m Leslie, a former middle school teacher turned editor and Teacher-Author. I’m here to help female entrepreneurs improve their writing and to help teachers around the world save time on lesson planning. I’m glad you’re here!